[FPSPACE] The hunt for water on Mars goes nanoscale

[Alex Michael Bonnici]

The hunt for water on Mars goes nanoscale



If space, as Douglas Adams said, is mind-bogglingly big and the nanoscale is mind-bogglingly small, it seems incongruous to hear that Swiss scientists are going to use the latter, in the form of atomic force microscopy, to explore the former.

Yet that's exactly what the team, led by Urs Staufer, an associate professor at the Institute of Microtechnology at the University of Neuchâtel, will be doing when NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander launches this week*. It is due to land on the Red Planet in March 2008.


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/31/nano_mars/